United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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I BELIEVE that I can make no better use of the courtesy here extended to me by the editor of Vox than to set down briefly my views about the function ' this publication should serve in the life of the College. We should be able, through the contents of Vox, to measure the extent to which the way of life we follow here has released creative literary capacity in the student members of our college community. Liberal edu¬ cation should not only mature the mind but should also impart an inward urge to use the critical powers creatively in the delineation and inter¬ pretation of individual and community experience. A mind that is truly awakened not only has something to say but is under an inner compulsion to try, at least, to say it. Vox exists to afford to the student a medium for creative, literary self-expression. This is its most important function. I sometimes fear that there is not as much of this urge to creative impression among us today as there was a few years ago 1 . The task of literary editors of College and University publications now seems to be that of urging their fellows to produce rather than that of discriminating judgment of what they have produced. I hope that this does not mean that there is falling upon us the malaise of intellectual complacency and irresponsibility. What we receive from others comes alive for us only by virtue of what creative effort we make to pass it on to others, whether in literary form or otherwise. It is in seeking to give, not merely to receive, that we add to the riches of our own mind and being. I, for one, shall feel happier when I hear once more that the editor of Vox is deluged with manuscripts and hard beset to choose the best among them for publication. W. C. Graham, Principal. Page Five

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EDITORIAL . . . which will be neither lengthy nor wise. “Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find,” is the policy early formulated and later actively pursued through¬ out the year. If occasionally the pursuit did not end in capture, then so much are we the losers. Amongst all our potential young Miltons, Hemingways, and Leacocks we have searched for ma¬ terial, upon which, being received, the Editorial Board ruminated, meditated, and ate their lunches, under the patient eye of our faculty advisor. Attempts have been made to present only vital, interesting writing, and suitable art work. Much of the work is of a controversial nature; we hope none of it is platitudinous. But the judgment as to its success lies with you. Thanks are extended to our faculty adviser, to the assistant editors, who have made the task both light and happy, to the contributors from outside the student body, to the engravers and printers, who have been most co-operative. We wish next year’s Editor as much good fortune in his co-workers as we have had this year.

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The Dismal Case of Prince Dr. Millar MacLure ' 7 ' 0UNG Prince Blog had been very carefully brought up. His parents had sheltered him from all evil influences, especially from women and machinery. When he was eighteen he had never seen a pin-up girl or heard the insistent music of an internal combustion engine. He was in consequence quite unfitted for his abrupt entrance into our culture. He had been very thoroughly schooled by an old tutor imbued with old-fashioned ideas of education. The good old fuddy-duddy had given the Prince a solid grounding in humane letters, including ancient and modern litera¬ ture, history and philosophy. He had the ab¬ surd notion that boys can be taught a great deal, and that they are the b etter for a rigid academic discipline. He also believed that the earlier one acquires some knowledge of the past the earlier one is equipped to deal with the present. He had some other strange ideas too, but these I omit, for I would not have you think too hardly of him. There was a counsellor in the entourage of the King, Blog’s father, a shrewd and ruthless but plausible fellow, who had his eye upon the crown. He reasoned that if Blog could be de¬ moralized (in a quiet way, of course) he might not be fit to succeed to the throne, and the way would be open for someone with modern ideas. Accordingly he suggested to the King that Blog should be sent to university, like other young men of his age. An excellent training for His Royal High¬ ness, he observed genially. See how the world wags, you know. Meet others of his own age. Democratic too, in a nice way. He will make the better ruler for having mixed with the cream of the masses—and that’s what you see at college these days, the cream of the masses. But surely, said the King nervously, from the things one hears about the universities . . . Surely the environment . . . Blog, now ... a sweet boy, we think, but tender. Yes, tender is the word I would use. I was just saying to the Queen this morning . . . Your Majesty, interrupted the counsellor, that is just it. What, after all, is the essence of government? Compromise. Compromise. Shaking hands with reality, I would call it. So if there is any little discrepancy between the Prince’s early training and what he experiences at college, it will teach him to compromise, to strike a balance. He will learn to hide the iron hand in the velvet glove, to season wisdom with temperance, and fortitude with discretion. In short, he will come to terms with the world. The King gave in, of course, and Blog was duly enrolled in a famous old college, in the Faculty of Arts, in the Freshman year, under the incognito of Smith, J. B. The process of de¬ moralization began. To begin with, he had nothing to do. He had done the whole four years’ work with his tutor before he registered. The tutor (who had been very worried about the whole business) had suggested that he should take courses in mathe¬ matics and biology. But the evil counsellor had him registered in Arts, majoring in English and Psychology, and Blog found he couldn’t take maths., because of some regulation, or the time¬ table—he never knew exactly. At first, it is true, he thought he would have his work cut out for him in the psychology courses. Both subject matter and terminology were strange and even fascinating. Then it came to him that the terms were made up of Latin and Greek roots, and those he understood. Unlike his classmates, he did not have to memorize them, for he knew what they meant. The subject-matter too, he perceived, was the human psyche. They were investigating it in an abstract and roundabout way (scientific, they called it); he was accustomed to understand it by its first direct expression in myth. I fear he began to subside into idle reverie, while his instructors plotted graphs of “attitudes” and “skills.” As for the courses in literature, they were ’useless altogether. The instructors laboured painfully to expound what to Blog were com¬ monplace. One of them, a very earnest person, spent a whole hour explaining the classical allusions in a poem by Milton, line by line. Blog slept. Most of the time, he noticed, these teach- Page Six